1. Which step?
Crawled, cited, fact matched and influenced are different steps, and they differ by orders of magnitude. On our pages 2,743 were crawled by verified crawlers and 42 were cited by the same provider (study). A report that says "visibility" without saying which step is reporting the biggest number it had.
2. Which models, which dates?
"ChatGPT" and "AI" are not models. The share of useful answers for the seller ranged from 52% to 83% across five models over the same weeks (study). A figure without the model name and date cannot be checked or repeated.
3. Were the crawlers verified?
Of checkable requests naming an AI crawler on our site, 45% passed the provider's documented check (study). If the report counts by user agent, it counts the rest too.
4. Compared with what?
A single figure with no baseline tells you nothing about change. Ask for the same measurement from the previous period, and for the noise between two measurements with nothing changed.
The questions to ask a vendor directly are at /checklists/questions-for-an-ai-visibility-vendor; the ladder itself is at /evidence.
Sources
- How many crawled pages a model actually cites
- Do models agree about the same product?
- Evidence methodology, version 1.0